Business intelligence data presents many challenges to user interface designers trying to find an optimal way for displaying data on a display. By nature, business intelligence data tends to be voluminous not to mention contextual data based on factors such as, a given user, a given business scenario, a given geography, etc. Many business intelligence tools including navigation tools, such as Polestar by Business Objects, an SAP company, provide flexible platforms for filtering and displaying complex data records to fit the needs of a casual business user.
Navigation tools and other business intelligence applications allow a user to explore data by selecting filter values to narrow the record sets of interest to them. Once they have identified records of interest, the users want to be able to display details or data objects that make up the records in a way that is meaningful and logical. However, users have to also contend with limitations such as space constraints on the screen and limited span of a viewer's attention.
The need to optimize the views of data records is more pronounced for records that have many data objects to be displayed. For instance, the current techniques use a simple table to display a record without any intelligence as to how the various parts of the record should be displayed. Some applications allow manual configuration to define how the record should be displayed. This experience can be made easier for the user without the user having to manually prepare or configure the layout for displaying the records.